


Derelict

by EmperorNorton150



Series: The New Era [3]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Canon, Space Battles, Space Opera, Space Pirates, That's it, and cleaning up the wreckage of imperialism, fighting pirates in space, just a big space adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27215437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmperorNorton150/pseuds/EmperorNorton150
Summary: General Catra of the Royal Bright Moon Navy leads an expedition to secure a treasure-trove of Horde military technology before it can fall into the wrong hands. But she's not the only one looking for it.The Horde left a lot of derelicts behind, all of them dangerous.
Relationships: Bow & Catra (She-Ra), Bow & Entrapta (She-Ra), Catra & Octavia
Series: The New Era [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934074
Comments: 15
Kudos: 23





	Derelict

_STAR SYSTEM ESMP-22074, 09.05.07 N.E._

Catra had hated the stars, ever since the first time she’d seen them. Which was, of course, quite recently. Growing up, the night sky was an abyss of eternal night, broken only the light of the moons. In fact, she’d never even _heard_ of the stars. Other people had, remembered the ancient days from before Etheria was plunged into Despondos. Bow had shown her ancient illustrated manuscripts depicting the constellations in his fathers’ library, and Frosta had told her once that in her kingdom people still sometimes sung songs about them. But Catra had been raised in the Horde. If Shadow Weaver had known anything about celestial history, she hadn’t bothered to share it. The first time Catra had seen stars it was when the sky ripped open and Etheria re-entered the universe, while she lay broken against the ruins of a forge and dared Glimmer to finish her off. This was just _after_ her armies had been thoroughly routed and the last people she counted as friends had betrayed her, and just _before_ she’d been kidnapped by an inter-galactic warlord. It wasn’t a time she liked to think about. And then she’d spent months trapped on the _Velvet Glove_ , with the ever-present glow of space just another reminder of how far from home she truly was. For years afterward, the sight of the vault of the heavens had made her feel uneasy. Disquieted. Nauseous. Like the world was spinning out from under her feet. But lately, she’d been starting to appreciate them. Maybe it was just simple acclimation from literal years of space travel. Maybe it was another sign of healing. Whatever the reason, it was nice to able to stand in her quarters and drink in the sight of the universe spread out before her through the viewport. Millions upon millions of stars, millions of worlds, tens of thousands of species and nations and civilizations and societies—it defied comprehension. The intercom buzzed, interrupting her reverie.

“General Catra sir? We’ve arrived.” She shook herself slightly.

“Excellent. I’m on my way.”

Precisely six minutes later the turbolift doors glid open and the commanding general of the Royal Bright Moon armed forces strode onto the bridge of the HMS _Vanessa_.

“[General on deck!]” growled Captain Bartok, the artificial voice of the translator bead lodged in his ear playing counterpoint to his reptilian snarl.

“At ease” Catra responded, exchanging salutes and waving the bridge crew back to their seats. _Vanessa_ was a scout cruiser, one of the new _Miranda_ -class warships just now emerging from the Etherian shipyards. She was built for long-range, independent deployments, and there was no bridge station for flag officers. Catra ignored the jumper seats along the back wall and leaned against the captain’s command chair, looking with interest at the holotank. ESMP-22074 was a typical solar system; four small, rocky planets tracing lonely orbits through the outer system, then a pair of gas giants, each surrounded by a constellation of moons and satellites, then two more terrestrial planets in close orbit of the hydrogen reactor that blazed at the system’s heart. None of the planets had much of an atmosphere or any life, there wasn’t even really an asteroid belt. There was absolutely no reason for the Etherian expedition to be here, except—

“Any sign of it?” she asked Major Talor, the sensor officer. He shook his head.

“Nothing yet sir. There’s an old Horde refueling base _here_ ” he taped a command and one of the outer planets flashes in the display “but it’s totally abandoned. No energy signature, no heat.”

“Hmmm. Send a recon drone to do an intensive sweep anyways. Just to be sure.” The captain gave the order, and a minute later a probe ejected from its launch tube and went arching away across the system. Catra watched the little mote of light glide across the holotank, away from icons of HMS _Vanessa_ and her consort, the freighter SS _Abigail._ Then she turned to the person who’d dragged them all the way out to this backwater and an arched an eyebrow.

“Well?” To her credit, Lieutenant Selwyn looked unperturbed. The young woman in the purple and gold uniform of the Etherian Joint Directorate of Intelligence simply smiled and pointed to the larger of the two gas giants in the display. “Do a scan of quadrants J5 through L2 for hafnium and gallium.” Catra nodded in affirmation to the sensor officer, who began programing a sweep into his console.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked the intelligence officer. Selwyn shrugged.

“No. Nothing in life is certain sir. But our sources are reliable.” Catra nodded. That was the best you could hope for, sometimes.

“We’ve got something!” announced Major Talor. “Doing an optical sweep now.” A moment later he whistled, and projected the visuals onto the main bridge viewscreen. A whisper ran through the room. They’d found it. It wasn’t the largest ship Catra had ever seen—the _Velvet Glove_ dwarfed it, and you could fit two or three of them inside a Tolkamarian colony ship. It was still impressive.

“Galactic Horde _Titan_ -class Bulk Transport. Eight million tons, two kilometers long, carrying 100,000 bots and enough supplies to support them in combat for six months” she murmured to herself, watching the blunted, rectangular lines of the vessel rotate slowly in front of the swirling blue and green of the gas giant. More than enough military might to conquer an entire world. “Impressive”.

“There’s no power or life signs” reported the operations officer. “Engines are totally cold. We’re seeing some micrometeor impacts, but the structural integrity seems sound, and she’s in a stable orbit.” Catra nodded.

“Just as we were told to expect. Lieutenant? Good work.” Selwyn bowed her head in acknowledgment. “Captain? Take us in please. And get me a channel to _Abigail_. I need to talk to the expedition commander.” 

“[Aye general.]” The scout cruiser _hummed_ beneath their feet as the engines surged. A moment later the display screen flickered, showing the bridge of the Etherian merchant ship. More expansive than a warship’s command chamber, it had fewer than half the consoles. Catra saluted.

“Your Highness? I presume you’ve been monitoring the situation.” The Prince Consort of Bright Moon and Techmaster of Etheria frowned.

“Are we being formal today?”

“Well” Catra said with a little flick of her ears, “I was trying to avoid embarrassing you in front of your crew, Arrow Boy, but if you don’t care…”

“Lost that battle _long_ ago” he said breezily. “Yes, my team is ready to board her as soon as we’ve matched orbits. Getting her engines back on-line—we’ll see? Could be a few hours, maybe a day or two. Depends on the condition.”

“Excellent.”

“It’s like old times again, isn’t it?” Bow grinned. “Exploring an unknown realm, searching for lost, ancient technology, danger stalking us from all around—” Catra snorted.

“You’re salvaging Horde electronics so it can be repurposed for the Etherian space program. Nothing mysterious about it.”

“Catra, Catra, _Catra_ you’ve got no sense of adventure” he chided.

“That’s why I’m alive today. And speaking _as_ the danger that used to stalk you? You guys really sucked at escaping it.”

“And yet…” Bow gestured at the purple and silver uniform of the Royal Bright Moon Navy that Catra wore. She rolled her eyes.

“Well, unless you’re planning on marrying anything that attacks you…” Bow laughed, and Catra smirked. “Seriously though, there shouldn’t be any active dangers over there, but be careful. And keep Entrapta under control.”

“Did I lay the foundations of the world? Did I hang the stars in the sky?”

“Yeah, point taken. Just—don’t let her reactivate the bots?”

“I will do my best.”

The Etherian ships dove deeper into the star’s gravity well, thulite engines flaring as they matched velocities with the derelict vessel and banked into orbit. The silver arrowhead of the _Vanessa_ and the bulbous cylinder of the _Abigail_ gleamed like gemstones against the perpetual storms of the planet below. Catra watched the viewscreens, her hands clasped behind her back, her tail lashing back and forth like a pendulum as shuttles launched from the freighter and cautiously approached the Horde transport. Reports crackled back over the airwaves—airlocks located, airlocks jammed, airlocks hacked. Shuttles landing in main bay, atmospheric integrity satisfactory, emergency lights functional. Team proceeding down main access corridor, _en route_ to the command center. Now only a thousand kilometers away, the transport loomed in the viewscreen like a mountain of gray titanium and steel. The Etherian vessels looked like minnows beside a leviathan. _A dead one,_ Catra reminded herself. 

“So, how’d we find this way out here anyways?” she asked Selwyn.

“It was on its way to Yanythri to help crush the rebellion there when Prime, ahh—abruptly exited reality, so to speak. The transluminal network went down across the known universe, and it crashed out of FTL here, systems totally scrambled from the backwash. The crew tried to communicate with their superiors, discovered that everything had gone to chaos and Old Night, and rather sensibly abandoned ship. We picked up the former chief navigator in a casino on Porak Station, trying to sell the information to the highest bidder.” Catra nodded, unsurprised. The fall of Prime’s Empire had left a lot of derelicts floating around.

“How’d we get it out of him?” she asked. The intelligence officer smiled thinly.

“We bid highest.” Catra snorted. She should have guessed. More reports flowed in, as the Etherian team painstakingly mapped out the interior of the bulk carrier. The command center had been located, as had main engineering. The computer cores were totally dead, but still intact. The thulite chambers in the engines hadn’t been shut down properly, but as long as there weren’t any micro-fractures along the inner membrane of the containment fields it might be as simple a matter as hooking up a spare generator and jump-starting the ship. This was beyond Catra’s areas of expertise, and so she simply listened in to the chatter of technicians and engineers bouncing ideas off each other. She hadn’t really expected to find the ship at all, and it was in much better shape than they’d feared. Maybe this operation wouldn’t be as bad as she’d feared. She swore silently, flicking her ears in consternation. _What had possessed her to think that?_ Adora had said exactly the same thing to her right before their mission on Casperia had fallen apart so spectacularly, leaving a major diplomatic incident, three honor duels, eight lawsuits, a constitutional crisis, and a minor dynastic war (still ongoing, last time she’d checked) in its wake. Never, ever, ever tempt the Fates. That was a rule she’d lived by since her time in the Horde and it served her well. What, she didn’t even need Adora along to indulge in mindless optimism, she could do it for herself now? Bow, she mused darkly. It was his fault, his bad influence with his cheerfulness and good spirits and friendliness and—it was at that moment that the alarm began to howl.

“Of course” she muttered. “Of _fucking_ course.”

“New contacts!” called out Major Talor, as eight bright-red icons flashed into view in the holotank. “Bearing mark-twelve-three-four, half-a-million klicks.” Captain Bartok hissed, swiveling his command chair around and stabbing a claw at the viewscreen.

“[How did they get so close without detection?]”

“They came in on a straight-line course from behind the gas giant” replied the sensor officer with a wince, his fingers dancing over his console as brought _Vanessa’_ s considerable sensor array to bear on the intruders. “We didn’t pick them up until they dropped out of the lightspeed.”

“[Bah! We should have dropped surveillance satellites on our way in, created a system-wide detection net.]” the captain groused, slapping his hand against his chair’s armrest.

“We should have” agreed Catra, stepping over to his side to peer over his readouts. “Make a note of it in the report for next time.” She frowned at the information light-codes hovering in the holotank. “Hmmm. _That_ ” she pointed to the rearmost of the new ships, a delta-shaped blunt wedge maybe a quarter their size “is an old Galactic Horde K16-class Interplanetary Cargo Carrier. But the rest of these……I’ve never seen anything like them.” Bartok growled his agreement. Lieutenant Selwyn stepped in close, and with a murmured

“With your permission sirs” tapped a series of commands into the console, bringing up a rotating wireframe diagram of a trifoil ship design. “It’s a Kentarite gunship. Crew of eight, five missiles in an external rack, one heavy laser turret and two pulse cannons. That’s the standard layout anyways, they’re designed to be modular.”

“[Why is this not in the warbook?]” asked the captain.

“The Kentar Stars are on the other side of the galaxy” replied the intelligence officer. “We’ve had no official dealings with them. But…...they inherited a formidable armaments complex from Prime, and they’re known to have few scruples about who they sell to.”

“So, they could be anyone but they’re unlikely to be friendly” concluded Catra dourly. Selwyn nodded. By now the mysterious squadron had drifted to a halt a few thousand kilometers away from both the prize and the Bright Moon ships. “Alright, take the ship to Condition Two, raise shields, and open a com channel.”

“Channel is open sir” reported the communications officer after a minute. Brushing back her hair and straightening her uniform, Catra planted herself firmly in front of the viewscreen and put on her best Command Face. 

“Unknown vessels, this is General Catra of the Royal Bright Moon Navy, commanding Task Group 6. Please identify yourself and explain your business here.” There was a moment of pregnant silence as the bridge crew waited. Then the viewscreen flickered to life.

“Well _hello there_ Force Captain. I must admit, I wasn’t expecting to see you all the way out here.” Catra had spent most of her life in situations that required discipline—being raised by a powerful sorceress looking an excuse to incinerate her, serving as the second-in-command to a barely-sane warlord, building and commanding the Royal Bright Moon Navy from the ground up, plus a few weeks trapped on the flagship of the most powerful individual in the recorded history of the universe. She was _very_ good at not showing what she was thinking. She still couldn’t keep her voice from rising to a squawk.

“ _Octavia_? What the hell are you doing out here?” The former Force Captain smiled grimly, her one eye glinting.

“Not _everyone_ got to swim off to Bright Moon when the Horde fell Catra. I know that you’re pretending to be a princess now, but did you just forget about the rest of us? You may have forced me off Etheria but I need to make a living _somehow_.” Catra frowned.

“That’s…...not actually true? I drafted the proclamation of amnesty for all members of the Horde myself.”

“Oh yeah, sure” scoffed Octavia, “Like I would be willing to take your charity? Graciously accept the mercy of Bright Moon and the rebellion? Please. I have _some_ dignity.”

“But you just……you know what, never mind. Really though, what are you doing here? Is this some kind of grandiose revenge plot against me? If it is, could you maybe get it started already?” Octavia laughed, her tentacles writhing around her head.

“You _would_ think that, wouldn’t you. No, no, I honestly didn’t expect to see you here. I’m just here to harvest some salvage.” Catra sighed. She should have known.

“You planning on taking over a planet of your very own? Or you just an arms dealer now?”

“Hmmm, you know, I don’t think it’s your business.”

“It doesn’t matter. Either way, I can’t let you have it.” 

“It’s not yours Catra. And we’re not in the Horde anymore. You don’t give me orders.” Catra shrugged.

“We’re in space, and I have a boarding party on the derelict. As per Article III of the Sirius Convention, that makes it my property. Back off before you get hurt.” Octavia hissed.

“You arrogant whelp. How _dare_ you threaten me? You think you’re so special, don’t you? You think the rules don’t apply to you, that you can do anything you want? You’re wrong Catra. You’re wrong, and I’m gonna show you how….” Catra had spent a considerable amount of her childhood tuning out Octavia’s rants, and she put that practice to good use now. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it, like an itch in her bones. If Octavia wanted to negotiate, she’d negotiate. If she was going to run, she’d have done it already. If she wanted to fight, well, she gained nothing from drawing out the preliminaries. Catra didn’t like Octavia, but she was under no illusions about the older woman’s competence. The only reason she’d spend this much time in pointless dialogue would be—she stiffened as the epiphany hit her. Everything then happened at once.

“Captain!” shouted Major Talor. “One of those ships launched a stealthed drone—it’s less than a hundred kilometers from us!”

“Get us out of here!” snarled Catra, he claws extending out of reflex. “Helmsman—twenty degrees starboard and accelerate to full power _now_!” There was a flash of unidentifiable energy, readings from the sensor arrays twisting out of comprehension and then crashing into static. Alarms screamed, then rings of electricity flared around every console and computer on the bridge, arcing together into a kaleidoscope of power. Somewhere, very distantly Catra could hear someone screaming and smell melting monofilament crystals. She tried to turn around and see what was happening outside. Her hand brushed against the console. That was a mistake. Fire raced up her veins, fire covered her eyes, everything slowed to a crawl—and then went black.

* * *

Bow poked his head through the doorway and whistled.

“Whoa” It was…...it was impressive. The entire core of the transport was hollow, a circular tube nearly a hundred meters tall and a hundred meters wide. It was filled with bots. As far as he could see in either directions, thousands upon thousands of Horde war machine, suspended in racks hanging from a lattice of steel and titanium, lit by the dull glow of emergency lights. Here and there along the walls were maintenance shafts, repair pods, and the giant hatchways that would deploy this military might into the atmosphere of a planet destined for subsumption into the Light of Prime. It was impressive. It was _terrifying_. 

“Amazing!” shrieked Entrapta, about an inch from his ear. “I’ve never seen such a high concentration of military-class robotic drones before! I wonder how the Horde maintained them in a state of good repair efficiently—just the amount of raw materials and power must be stupendous!” Her eyes were gleaming with the kind of absolute joy she usually only showed when they were falling into a black hole or a neutron star or a gravimetric wormhole or the like. Bow grabbed her by the belt as she tried to enter the core.

“Maybe you should leave the bots alone Entrapta” he said. She gave him a stern look.

“Bow, the robots are our _friends_.”

“ _These_ robots keep trying to murder us, remember?”

“Yes, they do appear to have a pre-programmed default towards killing us built into their automatic processing subroutines. Which would be _fascinating_ to study……oh, fine. If you say so.” 

“Atta girl” Bow patted her shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go take another look at the engine room.” His tracker pad buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket. “Yes?” One of his techs stared back, looking concerned.

“Your Highness? I’m not sure what’s happening but we just lost all contact with _Vanessa_ and _Abigail_.” Bow frowned. It could be nothing, just a fritz in the communication grid. But maybe not.

“Let’s meet up by the loading docks” he said. “We should be able to get a line-of-sight com laser out if nothing else.” Something didn’t feel right about this at all.

* * *

She woke up, which was a little bit surprising. She felt like shit, which wasn’t surprising at all. Shadow Weaver had electrocuted her enough times that she knew the feeling intimately—the dull ache in her bones, the little sparks of agony flickering up her nerves. She moaned.

“General? Are you awake? Oh, thank the Spirits of the Stars you’re ok!” Catra blinked, trying to adjust to the light. She tried to speak, but broke out coughing instead. She felt cool and steady hands bracing her, and someone tilted a canteen up to her mouth. She took a long drink, soothing her ragged throat, then tried again. Her blurry eyes focused on Lieutenant Selwyn, crouched over her, eyes wide, her serene façade totally dissolved.

“What…...happened?” she managed at last.

“They hit us with some kind of energy pulse— _Abigail_ too, I think. We’re intact, but we took a lot of damage.”

“I can see that” murmured Catra. The bridge was in shambles. Half the consoles were burned-out wrecks, there were scorch marks on the walls and floor, and the room was lit by the pale gleam of emergency lights. Most of the bridge crew was gone too, replaced by ensigns and warrant officers.

“I’m not sure what it was but—”

“I do” Catra interrupted, ruthlessly wielding the privileges of rank. She pulled herself up into a sitting position, ignoring the stabs of pain up and down her legs. “Or I think I do anyways. The Sunfire-7 was a missile-deployable electromagnetic pulse weapon the Horde was developing during the last year of the war. The firing range looked like this after a test fire.”

“Why didn’t it ever get used? I think I’d remember reading about that!” Selwyn sounded like she was torn between the fascination of a lifelong military history nerd and the consternation of an intelligence professional who’d discovered a hole in her knowledge. Catra smiled thinly.

“Too indiscriminate. We never managed to get it to fire unidirectionally. I guess Octavia found someone to figure it out though. What’s our status?”

“Not…...optimal sir. _Abigail_ ’s totally dead in space. We managed to do a partial reboot from the hardened military core but” Selwyn shook her head “One of the main engines is totally nonfunctional. The long-range communications array has been fried, our passive sensors are at about forty percent capacity and our active sensors are gone. Life-support is functional, but computer support is minimal. And a _lot_ of the crew’s been incapacitated.” 

“Is Captain Bartok…...?”

“He’s alive. But in the infirmary, still unconscious.” Catra nodded.

“You’ve been in command then?” Selwyn flushed.

“Yes sir. I hope it wasn’t presumptuous but—” Catra cut her off with a wave.

“No, no. Right thing to do.” She frowned suddenly. “What’s Octavia been up to?” The viewscreen and holotank were apparently still down, but Selwyn handed her a tracker pad displaying the feed from what was left of the sensor grid.

“Two of their gunships are shadowing us, one’s on top of _Abigail_ , and the other four are covering the Horde ship. Their transport’s linked up to the airlock, and they’re presumably boarding her now.”

“Huh. Why haven’t they boarded us yet?” Catra murmured under her breath. Then she flicked her ears, annoyed at herself. “Oh, of course. Not enough personnel. Once they secure the derelict they can take us under tow easily enough.” She raised an arm. “Help me up?”

“Um, are you sure that’s a good idea general?”

“Up.”

“Yes sir!” Selwyn helped lever her to her feet, and she braced herself against the captain’s chair, stretching her limbs one by one to try and get the dull ache out of them.

“What’s our weapons situation?”

“We still have three of the main laser turrets online, but six of the eight secondary cannons have burned out. Maybe half of the point-defense lasers are still active? Missile tubes are totally fused. Our circuits are shielded enough that until we open fire or start moving, they’re not going to know we managed a partial reboot but—”

“If we try and actually _do_ anything, they’ll blow us out of space immediately” Catra concluded. “What about our stealth systems?”

“Sixty, maybe seventy percent functional? But if we try and active them while they’re scanning us—”

“They’ll blow us out of space, yes.” Catra thought, her tail lashing back and forth as she let her mind cycle through the possibilities. They could _probably_ still take on Octavia’s squadron, but not from a standing start, not without maneuvering room and time to bring up the shields and charge the weapons. They couldn’t active any of the systems while those gunships were watching them, but they couldn’t _do_ anything to the gunships without alerting them that they were still a threat. It was like one of those too-clever-by-half training simulations Octavia had used to run the cadets through, where you had to doge through a dozen bots in perfect sequence to get to the override key. Catra had usually ended up just smashing a hole in one of them. After all, the pattern only worked if you stayed inside of it, it wasn’t _her_ fault Octavia never appreciated that—she smiled. “Lieutenant. That probe we launched into the outer system. Is it still active?” Selwyn punched a command into her console.

“Yes? It’s still surveying the abandoned refueling station. But sir, it’s a recon probe, totally unarmed.”

“Doesn’t matter. As long as we can hit it with a com laser—look” Catra brought up a system schematic on her tracker pad and traced a line. “See? Until _here_. And then we strike.” Selwyn frowned, then nodded slowly.

“It could work. I’ll get right on it.” Orders were given, and the ensign holding down the communications console got to work on the delicate task of trying to aim a line-of-sight laser at a drone less than ten meters in size a few hundred million kilometers away. Now that she had a course of action, Catra couldn’t avoid the question she’d been resolutely not thinking about.

“Have we had any contact with our boarding team?” she asked quietly.

“I’m afraid not sir” replied Selwyn. “We can’t get a signal though without alerting our watchers. But His Highness is very resourceful. I’m sure they’re alright.” Catra didn’t say anything, but her claws dug into the armrest of the command chair.

* * *

Bow was buried in the access panel up to his elbows trying to keep the pirates from overriding the lock he’d placed on the door when they got bored of waiting and blasted it open. He only had a few seconds of warning—a soft keening sound as the charges activated—but one of the few _positive_ lasting consequences of growing up in a war zone was that he still had excellent reflexes. Even as the door exploded, he was throwing himself down the corridor and reaching for his bow and arrows. The first two pirates to come through the door (well, the hole where the door had been) went flying back, wrapped in arrow-deployed nets. The third was pinned to the wall by a hot-glue arrow. The fourth yelped as a magnifying glass arow conked him in the head.

“Whoops! Sorry!” whispered Bow, sending another pair of net-arrows expertly at the next pair of pirates to try and force the breach. At that point, someone must have gotten tired of this, because instead of more pirates a barrage of laser fire lanced down the corridor, missing Bow’s head by mere centimeters. He flung himself flat and fired a smoke arrow down the hall, obscuring everything in a billowing cloud of smog. The laser fire stopped, and Bright Moon’s Prince Consort had half-a-second of smug satisfaction when there a muted _cough_ from the other side of the door and an automatic grenade launcher opened fire. The whole corridor lurched, as a string of miniature bombs detonated in midair, ripping apart the walls in a hail of shrapnel. “ _Are you insane?_ ” screeched Bow. “We are in space—space! Are you trying to kill us all?!” The only answer was another volley of grenades. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, Bow fired a sparker arrow into the smoke, and then dashed back down the hallway. Someone must have realized he was making a run for it, because blind-fired laser burst started punching through the cloud. He swept round a corner and slammed into another door. He raised his fist to pound on it, but before he could it slid and a pair of hands dragged him through it. As it closed, he could hear the _hiss_ of laser blasts burning into the ceramic armor. 

“I take it they’re through the outer doorway?” asked Technical Specialist Alex. Bow nodded.

“Yup. Couldn’t stop ‘em.” He surveyed the survivors of his team, scattered across the command center. A few held pistols or stun batons they’d brought with them, most were armed with old Horde laser rifles or repurposed tools. They looked exhausted. Since the pirates had ambushed them in the landing bay they’d been on the run, falling back through the maze of the ship, trying to erect barricades or lose contact. It wasn’t working. Bow forced a smile, and clapped his hands. “Alright folks! I know this is tough, but you’re doing great. We just have to stay alive until Catra rescues us, ok?”

“If she’s not working with them” someone muttered. Bow’s head snapped around.

“ _What?_ ” Technical Officer Dora looked embarrassed, but stood her ground.

“Well, the guys attacking us are ex-Horde, right? It was that octopus lady on the viewscreen demanding our surrender, right? And Catra’s, uhh, well, _y’know_. And we haven’t heard from her in an hour so maybe—”

“That’s enough” said Bow firmly. “I don’t know what happened to _Vanessa_ , but Catra would never abandon us. And she would _never_ work with the Horde again! Remember, none of us would be here if it wasn’t for Catra, and Horde Prime would still rule the Universe. Furthermore—” he paused, taking another look around the room. “Where’s Entrapta?” There was a moment of confusion as everyone else looked around.

“I…..don’t know” confessed Alex. “She was here when you left to try and hold the outer hallway, I know that.” Bow sighed and rubbed his temple. Great. It was just one thing after another.

“Ok, I’m going to go look for her. Alex, you defend this door. If they break through fall back to the—” It was at the moment that the door exploded. Laser blasts and gunfire swept the room, dropping two of Bow’s remaining men. The rest dropped behind consoles or chairs, returning fire as best they could. Bow sent a flight of arrows through the doorway, but the pirates had come prepared this time. Two stormed through the opening holding armor plates up as shields. An Etherian dropped one of them with a blast from his stun baton, but the other dove behind a dusty computer station. Two more followed, then two again, and now the fighting was at such close range that there no time to think or plan. It was deafening, the keening scream of lasers and the chatter of automatic weapons fire rising to an overwhelming pitch. This was it, Bow realized. There was no way they could pull back without getting massacred, and if they stayed, they’d get crushed eventually. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it; surviving the worst that the Emperor of the Known Universe could personally throw at him, only to die fighting space pirates led by a third-string Force Captain in some uninhabited star system no one had ever heard of before. It would be funny except for the dying part.

That’s when the _other_ door exploded.

* * *

“Um, general?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you, umm, did you know Force Captain Octavia when you were in the Horde?” Catra looked over at the young intelligence officer and smiled.

“She was one of my caretakers when I was a kid.” Catra almost laughed at the expression that flitted across Selwyn’s face. “Don’t worry, she was _much_ better than my primary warden. Though I _did_ claw her eye out that one time. I wonder if she’s still mad about that…...huh.” Catra scratched at her chin, deep in thought. Lieutenant Selwyn blinked, several times.

“I…...see.” she said finally, before turning back to her console where she was trying to coordinate search and rescue efforts without compromising their emissions control. Catra flicked her ears. She was never quite sure to relate to officers like Selwyn. Most servicepeople in the Royal Bright Moon Navy and Army were veterans of the Horde War, either members of the rebellion or ex-Horde soldiers like her. She had a shared history with them, an understanding of the past, for good and for ill. It didn’t always work out the way you’d think—she’d run into more than one Horde veteran who still held a grudge over her leadership failures during the last year of the war, and she’d spent a few very enjoyable hours once drinking with General Juliet and discussing each other’s respective tactics and strategies from battles they’d been on opposite sides of. But Selwyn had been fifteen years-old when the war ended, and she was from a neutral kingdom in the Southern Archipelago. To her, the War was a matter of newspaper reports from far away and history lessons at the Academy. It wasn’t _real_ to her. _Stars above, I must be getting old_ , she reflected wryly. _I’m complaining about the next generation_. With a strictly internal sigh, she drew her attention back to the tracker pad, noting the positions of the enemy gunships and their own vessels and the Horde transport that was the cause of all this damn mess. The recon drone……was not marked, but that was the point, and she glanced again at the timer clicking down the minutes and second until H-Hour.

“I believe it’s almost time” she announced. There was a flurry of movement as people’s heads turned to her, and she smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging way. “I know most of you have never had bridge watch before but don’t worry. You’re going to do fine. We’re Etherians! We can do anything. And our people on _Abigail_ and the transport are counting on us, not to mention everyone who will suffer if we let some pirates run off with 100,000 war bots. Lieutenant, pass the word. I think it’s about a minute away.” With the ship under strict lockdown, there was no battle alerts, no sirens, no call to general quarters. Just Lieutenant Selwyn and a pair of overworked warrant officers, signaling crew chiefs on secured hardlines and giving them the heads-up. Now, it was just a matter of waiting.

Unmanned Reconnaissance Drone DSE-0987-V4 was waiting too, to the extent that it had the capacity to understand that concept. Which was minimal. DSE-0987-V4 was a Class One recon probe, top-of-the-line technology, and one of the most advanced products of Dryl Security Enterprises. Only ten meters in size, it was capable of over a hundred hours of remote flight, was equipped with a fully-modern sensor array, and could independently maneuver to accomplish its objectives. But its AI brain was nowhere near as developed as one of the ship’s computer cores, or even a Horde bot. Not enough room in the casing for a full positronic net, and pointless given the limited nature of missions it was designed for. Because of this, though DSE-0987-V4 _noted_ the irregularity of its orders, it did not _wonder_ at them. Instead, it shut off its sensor arrays, ceased probing the abandoned refueling facility with a barrage of radar, lidar, tachyon detectors, and spectroscopes, rotated 180 degrees to points its thrusters directly away from the distant cluster of starships, and then fired its engines at full power for precisely three minutes. Then it preformed a full shut-down of all systems and tumbled through the abyss of the star system, hurtling inwards towards the sun on a totally ballistic trajectory. It continued this for one hour eighteen minutes and four seconds, at which point it reactivated visual sensors and preformed a local scan for stellar occultations. The pattern recorded matched the pattern it had been ordered to scan for, suggesting with 78.2% probability that DSE-0987-V4 was now passing through the middle of the unknown starship formation. That was enough to trigger its second set of orders, and the drone rebooted its reactor and initiated the command code that Lieutenant Selwyn had transmitted to it.

* * *

Tightly-coordinated blasts of laser fire pulsed through the shattered doorway, ripping into the pirate formation and sending half of them sprawling dead to the floor. Then they emerged, red eyes gleaming in immobile faces of silvered chrome—Horde war bots. A lot of them. The surviving pirates froze for half-a-second and then scattered; their nerve broken. More laser fire pursued them, and only one or two of the intruders managed to make it back through the door. One of the bots turned to its companions and broadcast a stream of binary code. They saluted, and then half of them charged after the pirates. The other half remained. Bow shook off the paralysis of shock and was raising his bow when he realized that the first bot’s laser-arm was pointing at him. He dropped his weapon. The bot stared. He stared back, a bead of sweat running down his brow.

“ _Identify. Yourself._ ” It blared abruptly. Bow jumped.

“What?” he stuttered.

“ _Identify. Yourself. Unknown. Entity._ ” The bot repeated.

“Uhhhhh…...Horde! I’m with the Horde! The Galactic Horde! The Galactic Horde of Horde Prime!” he shouted finally, breaking through his brain-fog. “We’re all the with the Horde!” he repeated, gesturing at his crewmembers, most of whom were very sensibly still hiding. “We sure do hate shadows here in the Horde, yes we do indeed, right?” He grinned maniacally. The bot continued to stare back emotionlessly. Its laser was still pointed at his chest.

“ _There. Is. No. Network. Connection. Where. Is. The. Light. Of. Prime._ ” It said finally.

“That’s what we’re here to do! Fix the network. It…...broke. But then, uhhh, pirates attacked!” At that moment, Entrapta sidled through the door that the bots had entered through, whistling.

“Hi Bow! It looks like, uhh, someone activated some of the bots. Hehehe, I wonder who it was. Not me! I was just, uhhhh, looking at them. Yes—”

“ _Are. You. With. The. Horde. Unknown. Entity._ ” Queried the bot.

“What? No! No, I’m—”

“ _Yes she is!_ ”

“I am? Are you sure?”

“ _Yes!_ ” Bow shrieked. Entrapta looked at Bow, then at the bot, then back at Bow, then at the bot’s laser cannon, which was still aimed directly at Bow’s torso, then at the dozen other bots positioned around the command center.

“Oh! Yes! Of course. I’m part of……the Horde.” The bot stood motionless for almost a minute. Bow swore he could almost see the gears turning in its head.

“ _We. Will. Await. Verification._ ” It announced finally.

* * *

Octavia drummed her fingers on the armrest of her chair. She was starting to get _really_ impatient. This whole endeavor had seemed like an easy smash-and-grab when she’d first gotten her hands on the info. Running into a rival team wasn’t a huge shock—having it be Catra had been, but getting to pay her back for abandoning them had been fun. But now things were just dragging on, and it was making her tentacles itch. Those Etherian ships were just sitting there, totally dead in space, but if they didn’t get a move on soon _someone_ over there was gonna figure out a way to manage a jump-start.

“Any word from our boarding team?” she growled. Her communications specialist winced, and tapped a command into his terminal.

“They’re working on it. They say they’ve pinned down the Etherians in—” he cut off in mid-sentence, then tapped his earpiece. “Sorry, _what_?” He paled. “Commodore, they say they’re under attack by Horde bots! They say that the Etherians activated the bots!”

“Sunless depths are they _insane_?” she snapped. She wouldn’t have thought that even Catra would be so fucking reckless as to try something that stupid. “Fine, pull back to the landing bays, we’ll deal with—” An alarm keened, and Octavia’s eye widened as a massive spike of energy flared outside. “ _What the fuck was that?_ ” she screamed.

“I don’t know!” responded her sensor officer, frantically tapping at his console. “We picked up a major flare of thermal radiation but we can’t find the source. Sweeping now—it’s like it just dissipated?”

“Well, figure it out!” Data poured in as her ships tried to find the source of the spike, but whatever it was, it was rapidly fading. Octavia hissed. This was turning into a nightmare. Her eye flickered across the console’s screen—then snapped back.

“What” she said in icily calm voice “happened to that cruiser?”

The detonation of the probe distracted the pirate crews for only a few seconds. They may have been criminals, but they were well-trained. It was long enough. _Vanessa_ activated her stealth field, fired her remaining engine, and lunged forward. The two gunships shadowing her exploded as laser-fire ripped them apart at close range, sending showers of molten steel spinning through space.

“How’s she holding together?” asked Catra, watching the readouts lurch wildly across her console.

“She’ll manage!” The Secondary Engineering Officer holding down that station called. “It’s not great but she’ll manage long enough!”

“Comforting” murmured the general. The third pirate gunship, the one guarding _Abigail_ , leapt into motion converging towards the speeding cruiser and sending a hail of laser pulses towards. The stealth field meant they couldn’t quite nail down a targeting lock, but near misses pocketed space around them or fizzled against the shields. The gunship, mindful of the fact was that it a twentieth the size of the scour cruiser, rocketed past the Etherian ship in a spiraling corkscrew, dodging the spread of energy fire form her turrets. It whipped back around and made another firing pass, this time landing several hits on the cruiser’s port flank; her crew confident in their ability to avoid the larger warship’s gunfire. But they couldn’t dodge the recon probe that fired out of _Vanessa_ ’s magnetic launch tube and vectored into a direct collision with them. Catra winced, watching. A Class One probe cost 8.5 million crescents—and she’d sacrificed two of them today. But her missile tubes had been fused shut, and the launch tubes weren’t. The impact tore off one of the gunships’ wings, sending it into a tailspin. Then the reactor detonated, and the remainder of the ship went dark, continuing off on a ballistic trajectory towards the sun.

“The others are coming about sir” reported Selwyn. Catra nodded, watching the display. The remaining four gunships had abandoned the Horde transport and were now racing towards her, falling into a standard box formation, two forward and two behind.

“Keep going like we’re accepting a meeting engagement” she ordered. “And be ready to maneuver precisely on my mark.” Seconds ticked down as the five ships converged on a single point of space. Closer, closer, closer—“ _Now!_ ” shouted Catra. “Full stop to the engines, take her sixty degrees to starboard!” There was a howl as the ships’ structure vibrated in protest, and a dozen status indicators winked from green to orange, but _Vanessa_ lurched sideways in space. At the same time, three of the gunships broke formation, curving outwards and then back in, converging like the petals of a flower on the spot where the Bright Moon cruiser had been. It was a perfectly-executed maneuver, designed to bring firepower to bear against the more-powerful ship from multiple angles, overwhelming their defensive grid. If _Vanessa_ had still been there. As it was, one of the gunships found itself diving straight into the line of fire of the scout cruiser’s main battery and was destroyed by a single well-placed volley. The other two found themselves totally out of position, the Etherian ship in their rear. Thulite crystals flashed as they tried to reverse course in time, but to no avail. Surgical bursts of laser fire stabbed out—lances of red pulsing against the whorling turquoise and emerald storms of the gas giant below—and both gunships vanished in balls of fire. The last one dove into a spin and then shot off at a right angle, away from the warship.

“Maintain pursuit” ordered Catra. “I don’t want Octavia getting away.” As the cruiser lurched into motion again, Selwyn asked

“How do you know that was their command ship sir?”

“She was holding back, letting the others go in first. Classic Horde command technique.”

“Ah.” The smaller ship raced ahead, whipping through a series of maneuvers, making any kind of target lock impossible. Then it dodged behind the nearest moon, an ice-ball only a few hundred kilometers in diameter.

“Do we follow her sir?” asked the helmsman. Catra shook her head.

“Absolutely not. She’s almost certainly already set a trap. The second we clear the horizion she’ll punch half-a-dozen missiles into our belly. No, take up a station above the moon. Be ready to jump when she makes a run for it.” As the scout cruiser slid into position, the general turned to her communication officer. “Ensign Arden, see if you can contact the boarding party.” A minute went by, the tension slowly mounting. Then the display screen on her console flickered to life. Catra started to smile, seeing Bow and Entrapta, alive and in one piece. Then she barred her fangs in shock as she caught sight of the row of Horde bots standing behind them. Bow spoke before she could say anything

“ _Hello Force Captain Catra of the Galactic Horde who you are part of just like we who are also part of the Galactic Horde of Horde Prime!_ I was just informing this gentle-bot about the repair mission we’re on. The one from Horde Prime. To repair their connection to the Empire’s network. Because the Empire exists still. And definitely hasn’t fallen. Not even a little bit.”

“ _Can. You. Provide. Verification. Unknown. Entity._ ” Demanded the bot directly behind the Prince Consort. Catra shook herself.

“Yeeees. Yes. Yes, of course. I am Force Captain Catra, Galactic Horde. Authentication code Kappa-Epsilon-zero-zero-zero-nine-six-five-zero-two-seven-eight-four-one-Omicron-two. Cast out the Shadows!”

“ _Bring. In. The. Light._ ” The bot paused, the light in its eyes blinking. “ _Your. Code. Is. Valid. But. Over. Sixty. Cycles. Obsolete._ ”

“Well, of course.” Catra said breezily. “You’ve been cut off from the network. You’ve missed the most recent updates and status changes. We’ve been sent by Command to bring you back up to date and repair the damage.”

“ _Understood. Force. Captain. When. Will. The. Work. Proceed._ ”

“As soon as I finish off the criminal scum who attacked us, I’ll dispatch the rest of the repair team. Long Live The Light of Prime!”

“ _The. Light. Shines. Forever._ ” The communication channel clicked off. Catra stared at her display, took a deep breath, then another. _I’m going to kill Entrapta_ she thought calmly. No, no, that would be unfair to the princess, who was only doing what she did best. _I’m going to murder Bow_. Much better.

“Sir, the gunship is running!” called out the sensor officer. Catra sighed, watching the icon of the little ship on her display screen climb above the system’s ecliptic, clawing for open space. She could catch her. Probably. But…..

“Open a hailing frequency” she said. Then “Octavia, I know you can hear me. I want to talk.” There was a moment’s pause, and then her one-time trainer and caretaker’s raspy voice echoed out of the ship’s speakers.

“What the fuck do you want Catra, to gloat?”

“No. Well yes, a little bit, but I’m not going to. I want to negotiate.”

“What?” Octavia sounded surprised. “Negotiate about _what?_ ”

“You’re probably aware that the Horde bots on that transport have been reactivated.”

“I’m aware that _your_ idiots turned them on, yes.” Catra let that slide. It was almost certainly true, after all.

“I want you to hit the ship with one of your EMP missiles.”

“Wow, you’re twice as crazy as I remembered and I remember you being _pretty_ crazy. You know these things aren’t exactly precision weapons, right? It’d probably kill half your people too.”

“Not if you tune down the intensity fifty percent. I _know_ there’s a setting for that, I was there for the development process.”

“Hmmm. What’s in it for me?” Octavia still sounded skeptical, but at least a little intrigued now.

“You have people onboard too. Don’t you want to save them?”

“Eh. They’re probably all dead by now. Besides, they’re just goons! I can get new goons anywhere.”

“Fine. I’ll give you a forty-eight-hour head start before I send an alert to every security agency in the quadrant about you.” There was a lengthy pause.

“Seventy-two-hours.”

“Deal. Just do it!” The communication channel clicked off, and the last gunship arched back towards them, diving at the Horde vessel.

“Is this…...safe?” asked Selwyn quietly, low enough that the rest of the bridge crew couldn’t hear. Catra shook her head and replied at the same level.

“No. It’s a risk but……there’s a hundred thousand bots onboard that ship. To defeat them in close-quarters combat we’d need to bring in the entire Royal Bright Moon Army, the Royal Army of the Kingdom of Snows, probably the Salinean Seakeepers. We’d take heavy casualties, and there’s no _way_ we’d get Bow and the others out alive. This is our only choice.” Selwyn nodded unhappily. On the display screen, a tiny icon separated from the gunship and plunged towards the transport. When it was a few hundred meters away it burst, and static filled the screen as the energy pulsed, sending arcs of lightening crackling along the spine of the Horde ship. With that done, Octavia’s ship spun and leapt for open space again.

“She’s not sticking around to say good-bye I see” noted Selwyn.

“Octavia never was particularly sentimental” said Catra tightly. She felt like there was a vise around her throat. She could not imagine having to tell Glimmer that she’d been responsible for the death of someone else she loved—literally could not imagine it, like there was a wall across her mind, blocking off the possibility—the communications panel buzzed.

“Um, hello? All the bots just fell over and the power went out, was that you?” Catra released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Yes Bow, it was us. We hit the ship with an EMP pulse.”

“Thank you! Wait, how did you—never mind, tell me later. What in the name of the Stars has been going on out there?!”

“It’s a long story. Why don’t you get your team together and pull them back off the ship? We’re going to need a much larger salvage team now that I, uhh, fused the circuits. Not to mention reinforcements.”

“Sounds good. But I’m gonna want to hear the rest of that story once I’m over there!”

“Yeah, yeah, arrow boy, just get off that death trap before something else goes wrong.”

“Will do!” The communicator clicked off. The battered Bright Moon warship turned and cruised back towards the pair of immobilized ships, its single engine blazing. As shuttles carrying medical personnel and maintenance teams launched, curving in towards both ships to succor their fellow Etherians, Catra tapped Selwyn on the shoulder. The lieutenant looked up from the tracker pad where she’d been correlating reports from engineering.

“Was this your first time in action?” asked the general. Selwyn nodded. “You did good out there today kid.” The younger officer smiled.

“Thank you sir. You know you’re only about five years older than me, right?” Catra cuffed her ear gently.

“Hush! Don’t bother me with details.” But she was smiling too as she turned back to her own paperwork. The whole operation had been a stars-cursed disaster, but it could have been worse. They’d secured the objective, they’d smashed a sizable pirate squadron, and no warlord would be getting their hands on a hundred thousand death machines. There was still a lot of work to do—she needed to supervise the rescue and recovery efforts, contact Greenleaves Base to summon those reinforcements, write up a report she could pass on their allies—but things were looking up. Then it hit her.

“ _Shit!_ ” she snarled.

“Sir? What it is?” Catra groaned and rubbed at her forehead, her ears flattening.

“I just realized—Adora is _never_ going to let go on another mission by myself after this!”

**Author's Note:**

> \- This started out as just a little space battle I wanted to write and then it got much longer than I meant it to. Whoops. 
> 
> \- Everything I know about how Space Communication works comes from Star Trek. 
> 
> _ I have a great love of enumerating ship classes and I may have overindulged that here.


End file.
